In order to balance the continuously hiking nickel cost with the profit margin, South Korea-based Posco is now shifting its production to 400 series stainless steel instead of its 300 type. The price of no-nickel 400 series will be at only a third of 300 grades. With the price of nickel reaching highs of USD 50, Posco aims to bring up the newly developed 400 series products, which contain no-nickel but chrome, to the market. Furthermore, Posco will reduce their 300-grade steel production to 1.3 million tonnes, and increase 400-grade stainless steel production to 700,000tns from 540,000tns. Posco also plans to reduce the consumption of nickel by 14% to 63,000tns in 2007 and use nickel scrap for production instead. Although nickel scrap is going up slightly, it is still cheaper than refined nickel. Based on this reason, Posco will switch the production material from nickel to nickel scrap largely by 60%.
